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Our research

The research focus of the WA Kids Cancer Centre is on developing safe new treatments for childhood cancers, including brain cancer, sarcoma, leukaemia and neuroblastoma.

The research focus of the The Kids Cancer Centre is on developing safe new treatments for childhood cancers, including brain cancer, sarcoma, leukaemia and neuroblastoma.

The research of the The Kids Cancer Centre is undertaken by laboratory-based scientists, paediatric oncologists, computational biologists, and many higher degree (mainly PhD) and Honours students. Our research is organised into collaborative programs of laboratory-based and translational research.

Our goal is to discover new therapies - therapies that are more effective and less toxic - to fight the most aggressive cancers in babies and children. Our research focuses on:

  • Harnessing the power of the body's own immune system to fight cancer cells via immunotherapy.
  • Determining why apparently similar cancer cells from individual patients respond differently to treatment.
  • Testing existing drugs and new compounds to improve patient outcomes.
  • Understanding the biology of individual cancers to identify weaknesses to target with therapies.
  • Developing new treatments with industry partners to feed our drug development pipeline.

The WA Kids Cancer Centre has a game changing approach for fighting childhood cancer

Our research strategy is to use our world-first childhood cancer laboratory models to investigate potential new cancer immunotherapies and personalised medicines.

Immunotherapy is an exciting cancer treatment that works by engaging the body’s own immune response to fight the cancer. It promises to be an effective and safe cancer therapy that does not cause the collateral damage of conventional treatments. Immunotherapy has fulfilled this promise for adults with extraordinary results in some cancers. Sadly, the development of immunotherapy treatments for children falls far behind.

Personalised medicine involves performing detailed genetic analysis of individual children with cancer and using the information gained to treat them with drugs that are precisely targeted to the individual tumour. All children with cancer treated in Perth undergo such genetic testing, allowing us to use the genetics of individual’s tumours to inform both treatment development in the laboratory and clinical trial opportunities on the ward.

Our goal is to develop such promising and safe treatments to defeat childhood cancers and reduce the need for toxic chemotherapies and radiotherapies.

If you are interested in potential research collaborations, please contact us.

Latest

Videos

Perspectives on the origin and therapeutic opportunities in Down syndrome-associated leukemia

It is now well accepted that germline or de novo genetic alterations predispose to cancer development, especially during childhood. Among them, constitutive trisomy 21, also known as Down syndrome (DS), has been shown to predispose to acute leukemia affecting both the myeloid (ML-DS) and lymphoid (DS-ALL) lineages. ML-DS is associated with a good prognosis compared to children without DS, due in part to a higher sensitivity to conventional chemotherapy.

IDH mutant high-grade gliomas

Gliomas are the most common type of malignant primary central nervous system (CNS) tumors, resulting in significant morbidity and mortality in children and adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients. The discovery of mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) genes has dramatically changed the classification and understanding of gliomas.  IDH mutant gliomas have distinct clinical, pathological, and molecular features including a favorable prognosis and response to therapy compared to their wildtype counterparts.

High Expression of NTRK1 in ETV6::RUNX1 Positive Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia Drives Factor Independence and Sensitivity to Larotrectinib

ETV6::RUNX1 is one of the most common recurrent genomic abnormalities in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and is associated with a good prognosis. High expression of NTRK1, encoding tropomyosin receptor kinase A (TrkA), confers a poor prognosis in other malignancies and may contribute to therapy resistance in patients with ETV6::RUNX1 B-ALL.

Boosting the influenza vaccine schedule in children with cancer: a prospective open-label study

Current immunization guidelines recommend one dose of influenza vaccine for children aged ≥9 years and two doses for younger or vaccine-naïve children. However, children receiving chemotherapy have an attenuated immune response. We performed a prospective open-label study in children undergoing treatment for cancer at Perth Children's Hospital, Western Australia, to examine the safety and efficacy of a boosted influenza schedule.

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